🚬 Let's light up a topic that was truly smokin' in the '50s—tobacco. North Carolina was the heartland of tobacco farming and cigarette production. Towns like Winston-Salem were practically built on tobacco leaves, serving as headquarters for major companies like R.J. Reynolds.
📈 The 1950s were a heyday. Cigarettes were everywhere—in ads, in movies, and even doctor-endorsed! This was before the Surgeon General's report linking smoking to health issues. To be in North Carolina during this time was to be in the hub of an industry that was, quite literally, burning money.
🚭 But winds of change were in the air. Toward the end of the decade, early scientific research began to cast a shadow over smoking. North Carolina’s industry would eventually face challenges, but in the '50s, cigarettes were still the king of the crop.
